matically, so wrestling with God in prayer as to make one say of him, 'As a prince hast thou power with God and with men.' Sometimes the ordinary low responses of fellow-worshippers in the Methodist prayer-meetings would be excited by seraphic expressions in the prayer of a slave brother to such a pitch, as to cause involuntary shoutings from the whole meeting, in which I almost wished to join; for the thoughts expressed were so awakening and elevating, that 'or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Aminadab.""

With regard to the religious, orderly, and social manners of the slaves, Dr. Adams remarks,

“A better-looking, happier, more courteous set of people, I had never seen, than those colored men, women, and children whom I met the first few days of my stay in Savannah. It had a singular effect on my spirits. They all seemed glad to see me. I was tempted with some vain feelings, as though they meant to pay me some special respect. It was all the more grateful, because for months sickness and death had covered almost everything, even the faces of friends at home, with sadness to my eye, and my spirits had drooped. But to be met and accosted with such extremely civil, benevolent looks, to see so many faces break into pleasing smiles on going by, made one feel that he was not alone in the world, even in a land of strangers.

"It was one of the pleasures of taking a walk, to be greeted by all my colored friends. I felt that I had taken a whole new race of my fellow-men by the hand. I took care to notice each of them, and get his full smile and salutation; many a time I would gladly have stopped and paid a good price for a certain good-morning' courtesy and bow; it was worth more than gold; its charm consisted in its being unbought, unconstrained; for I was an entire stranger. Timidity, a feeling of necessity, the leer of obliged deference, I nowhere saw; but the artless, free and easy manner which burdened spirits never wear.

"It was difficult to pass the colored people in the streets without a smile, awakened by the magnetism of their smiles

Let any one at the North, afflicted with depression of spirits, drop down among these negroes, walk these streets, form a passing acquaintance with some of them; and, unless he is a hopeless case, he will find himself in moods of cheerfulness never awakened, surely, by the countenances of the whites in any strange place.”

The plantation negro feels highly respectable in his useful calling; and every master who is not a brute treats him always as one of the benefactors of mankind. And any listener can at harvest time hear these slaves complacently exulting over the large crops that their own labor has culminated. It is universal instinct to every mind to be wholesomely proud that it is useful in its day and generation; and, indeed, no poor retire to their rest at night with less of actual crime having been committed by them through the day; for they all feel the moral elevation of their beneficial labors.

"Come hither, ye that press your beds of down,
And sleep not see him sweating o'er his bread
Before he eats it. 'Tis the primal curse,
But soften'd into mercy; made the pledge

Of cheerful days, and nights without a groan."

Of the political condition of the slave, the beforementioned Dr. Adams, in 1854, speaks thus:

"The conviction forces itself upon my mind, that at the South the most disastrous event to the colored people would be their emancipation, to live on the same soil with the whites." . . . "The two distinct races could not live together, except by the entire subordination of one to the other." ... "Protection is now extended to the blacks; their interests are the interests of the owners."... "But, ceasing to be a protected class, they would fall a prey to avarice, suffer oppression and grievous wrongs, encounter the rivalry of white emigrants, which is an

element in the question of emancipation here, and nowhere else." ... "Antipathy to their color would not diminish; and being the feebler race, they would be subjected to great miseries."*

The negro of the South is indeed prone to be a religious being a believer in the worship of God in his hypostasis of Jesus Christ, and an observer of the laws which surround his condition, when his mind is not poisoned by the miserable abstraction of Northern abolitionism. And it is a marvel that any law-abiding and order-loving citizen of the North-any person whose mind is indoctrinated by Divine teachingshould countenance, far less harbor, deluded, lawless fugitives.

"If one man," says Mr. Clingman, "out of every hundred, should be a thief, and the other ninety-nine should not restrain them by legislation or otherwise, this minority of thieves would be able to steal all the property in the community." ... "If societies were formed in Massachusetts to steal property in Connecticut or New York, the Legislature and people of the State would doubtless take steps to restrain them. This is done even with reference to foreign countries, to prevent war between them. American citizens are punished for going into Canada to disturb that British community.

"If societies were formed in Canada for a similar purpose, and were, in fact, to steal an equal amount of property from New England, New York, Ohio, and other Northern States, to what is carried away by the abolitionists from the South, we should be involved in a war with Great Britain in less than six months. What would be the feeling of those border States if Canadian orators should boast that their societies had robbed them of $45,000,000 worth of their property, just as they now say they hold that value of Southern runaway slaves? But

* Dr. Nehemiah Adams's "South Side View of Slavery."

men who combine to plunder the people of the Southern States, so far from being punished, are in many of the free States encouraged by the legislation there.

"During the last session of Congress, the Senator from New York introduced a proposition for additional legislation to prevent the foreign or African slave-trade to the United States. In 1808, Congress passed laws to prohibit that trade; and since that time, a period of more than fifty years, as far as I know, or have reason to believe, the law has been violated but in a single instance. What other law on your statute-book has been so well kept? I repeat, what law has Congress ever passed, which there was a temptation to violate, that has been so well observed? That it was not broken often, is not owing to any want of opportunity. Northern as well as foreign ships have been engaged in the trade, and the extent of the Southern coast affords much greater facilities for the introduction of slaves than does the island of Cuba, into which large numbers are annually carried. This law has not been broken simply because the people of the South were not willing to violate it. Now, sir, let me state a case for the consideration of the Senate. Suppose, instead of what has actually occurred, the State of Georgia, where some negroes were landed, and a number of other Southern States, had passed the strongest laws which could be devised to defeat the act of Congress forbidding the African slave-trade, and encouraging that traffic by all the means in their power. Suppose, further, that Southern Senators, and other prominent public men, had, in their speeches, earnestly recommended the violation of the law of Congress, and that all through the South money was subscribed and associations formed to defeat the law, and provide facilities by railroad or otherwise for the introduction of Africans, and mobs gotten up to overpower the United States marshals; could not a hundred negroes have been imported for every one that the abolitionists have stolen? Yes; with a shore-line of more than ten thousand miles, millions might have been imported. This proceeding would have been a violation of the laws of the United States, just like that which has occurred with reference to the fugitive-slave law. In the case supposed, however, the Southern men would have had

greatly the advantage, on the score of both political economy and morality. They might have said, with truth, that the negroes imported from Africa added to the production and wealth of the United States, while those carried North by the abolitionists were generally converted into idle vagrants. It might also have been said that African savages were, by being brought to the United States, partially civilized, and not only made more intelligent and moral, but also Christianized in large numbers; while the negroes carried to the North become so worthless and so vicious, that many of the States there were seeking to exclude them by legislation, as communities do the plague and other contagious disorders. And the Senator from New York, who has declared that it is a religious duty of the people of the North to violate the fugitive-slave law, and urges them, instead of delivering up the runaway negroes, to protect and defend them as they do their paternal gods, stands up in the face of the American Senate and complains of violation of the laws against the African slave-trade! Was there ever such an exhibition? I repeat, was the like ever seen since the creation of the world?

"When we turn to the free negroes of the United States, what shall I say of them? Why, Northern as well as Southern men, and even Canadians, characterize them as the most worthless of the human race. Formerly, the abolitionists ascribed their degradation to the want of political and social privileges. But during the middle ages, in Europe, the Jews were not only without political privileges, but were, as a class, odious and severely persecuted; yet they were, nevertheless, intelligent, energetic, and wealthy. In point of fact, in some portions of the Northern States, the negro has been made a pet of, and, but for his native inferiority, must have thriven, and even become distinguished. On the other hand, it is an indisputable fact that the four million negroes who are held in slavery in the South, when their condition is considered with reference to their physical well-being and comfort, their productiveness as laborers, their intelligence, morality, and religion, stand superior to any other portion of their race. While the free negroes in the North, with fresh accessions from abroad, diminish in numbers, the slaves of the South increase as rapidly as the white race,

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